Part 15 (1/2)
”Down there,” he rasped into his headset microphone. ”There-get us down there.” Then he switched channels, into the all-bands monitoring system so both Borozeni's ground commanders and the pilots of the other helicopter guns.h.i.+ps could hear him. ”This is Rozhdestvenskiy-we will converge on the factory due west of the town. Only KGB personnel will be allowed inside the factory complex itself, and only those with a clearance level over CX Seven will be allowed within the factory. Crush any resistance.”
He glanced through the bubble in front of him as another skyrocket soared up, exploding, as if the fools-he thought-were celebrating the attack.
Into the microphone again, he snapped, ”And find the source of those fireworks; I want them stopped!”
As he judged it, the factory was less than a mile away now so again he spoke into the microphone, but on the aerial-force band only. ”This is Rozhdestvenskiy. Commando squad ready! Pilots take up positions!”
His own s.h.i.+p was hanging back as a half-dozen helicopter guns.h.i.+ps, their cargo doors open, formed themselves into a crude circle around the factory fence, perhaps one hundred feet in the air.
Rozhdestvenskiy saw the first of the ropes being let down; then suddenly, like dozens of spiders sliding on filaments of web, dark-clad forms started down the ropes, rappelling toward the ground. ”Good man!” he rasped, unconscious that he had spoken into the microphone.
The first of the men were on the ground, establis.h.i.+ng a perimeter, their a.s.sault rifles and light machine guns ready.
The last of the commando team was down. ”Move out, commando force s.h.i.+ps,”
he barked into the microphone. ”Take up positions two hundred yards from and around the factory fences.”
Rozhdestvenskiy turned to his own pilot, tapping the man on the arm, then jerking his thumb downward.
The pilot nodded, then started the machine ahead and down.
Rozhdestvenskiy's mouth was dry, his palms sweating.
He snapped up the collar of his windbreaker, checking I.
the AKM across his lap.
He had never been in ma.s.s combat before.
The helicopter guns.h.i.+p was hovering, then dropping, gliding forward slightly and stopping.
He felt the lurch, felt the impact; then he released the restraint harness, throwing open the side door and stepping out near a squad of the commandos already on the ground, his own personal KGB team surrounding him.
”We enter the factory. Follow me!” He started to run, remembering as he ran to raise the rifle into an a.s.sault position.
The gates of the factory complex were locked with a chain, a ma.s.sive padlock securing them.
”Stand back.” He raised the a.s.sault rifle, firing into the lock. The sound of the jacketed slugs tearing into the metal of the lock was deafening, but the lock seemed to have been broken.
He reached for it, feeling the heat of the metal despite the gloves he wore, wrenching it open, then twisting it free of the chain.
”Get the gates opened-now!”
The chain-link twelve-foot gates swung inward, and Rozhdestvenbkiy stepped into the service drive of Morris Industries-a giant step, he felt, in history.
He started to run, shouting again, ”Follow me!” Above him, there was a spectacular burst, a skyrocket of blue and red and gold in a starburst, ma.s.sive, exquisite.
He continued running, reaching a set of double doors. They would be locked. He raised the a.s.sault rifle again, firing into the locking mechanism. A burglar alarm sounded.
”Idiots,” he shouted, then reached the doors, twisting on the outside handle, wrenching the door open outward. He stepped into the factory complex, his men surrounding him. The building was in reality a series of interconnecting buildings.
”The loading docks,” he shouted, then started running. It the materials he sought would he anywhere, they would be by the loading docks. There would be time then to search out precisely where they were manufactured. Gray light shafted through wire mesh-reinforced gla.s.s windowpanes as he ran the length of the first building; and occasionally through one of the windows as he looked out, he could see fireworks in the sky-more rockets, more starbursts. Were the people here insane?
He reached the end of a long corridor, already breathless from the running. Glancing to right and then to left, he looked right again.
”There-hurry.” For some reason, some reason he couldn't understand, he felt the need to hurry that much greater each time one of the skyrockets would explode. He felt-he couldn't define it.
Ahead of him he saw ma.s.sive garage doors of corrugated metal, and between the doors and the corridor through which he ran, he could see crates-coffin-shaped and roughly the same size. He stopped running, leaning heavily against the wall, his breath coming in short gasps.
”Victory,” he shouted. ”The final victory over the Americans!” Suddenly the gla.s.s from the wire-meshed corridor windows shattered over his head, shards of it falling on and around him.
He stepped away from the wall, looking through the corridor windows into the dawning sky-a huge star-burst, the largest firework he had ever seen-pale colors against a pale sky. And the concrete beneath him began to tremble, the walls to shake, dust and infinitesimally small chunks of debris drifting down.
”My G.o.d!” Where had he learned that? he thought. ”They're blowing it up!”
He started to run, the crates- the precious crates-behind him. Survival was more immediate now as the cross supports began crumbling and a three-foot section of concrete killed the commando beside him-just beside him.
Squads of a.s.sault rifle-armed Soviet infantrymen were pouring through the streets.
”d.a.m.n it,” Rourke rasped, both of the twin Detonics stainless .s in his fists. Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to rumble, to shake.
He glanced at the black luminous face of the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist, then squinted skyward- full dawn. The explosions had begun just as Martha Bogen had said they would.
There was no time now-no chance to save the town. Russian troops-why?
The explosions. Already, in the distance near the high peaks of the rim of the valley, he could see rock slides starting.
He had waited near the school, still several blocks from Martha Bogen's house-and the garage where his Harley should still be hidden.
But waiting for the Soviet troops to clear the street in front of him would be suicidal now.
Thumb-c.o.c.king both pistols, he started to run, the ground shaking beneath him still more violently.
Gunfire. Soviet AK series a.s.sault rifles, firing toward him, gla.s.s shattering in the louvered cla.s.sroom windows beside him as he jumped a hedgerow, running.
Rourke wheeled beside a concrete vertical support for a portico rooi. He fired the pistol in his right hand, then the pistol in his left, bringing down an a.s.sault rifle-armed soldier. The man's body spun, his a.s.sault rifle firing wildly, into his own men.
Rourke started to run again. Past a flagpole. During the day there would have been an American flag there and a Kentucky state flag as well.
He was nearly to the street beyond the school front lot. The ground trembled again.
He tried envisioning what the men and women of the town would have done to ensure their ma.s.s suicide. The ground trembled again and he saw a black disk sail skyward out of the street. There had been a large natural-gas storage area. . . .
”Natural gas,” he rasped, throwing himself to the gra.s.sy ground beneath him.
The gunfire, the shouts, the commands in Russian and in English to halt-all were drowned out. Rourke dropped his pistols, covering his ears with his hands.
The street a hundred yards ahead of him was a sea of flame, chunks of paving hurtling skyward. They had mined the gas system.
Rourke grabbed for his pistols, pus.h.i.+ng himself to his feet, running, stumbling, running again. A line of explosions-smaller ones-ripped through the road ahead of him in series. He had to cross the road to reach Martha Bogen's house on the other side.